When Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter with the Ercotts, he found in his letterbox a visiting card: "Mrs.Doone""Miss Sylvia Doone," and on it pencilled the words: "Do come and see us before we go down to Hayle--Sylvia." He stared blankly at the round handwriting he knew so well.
Sylvia! Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him how in this tornado of his passion the world was drowned.Sylvia! He had almost forgotten her existence; and yet, only last year, after he definitely settled down in London, he had once more seen a good deal of her; and even had soft thoughts of her again--with her pale-gold hair, her true look, her sweetness.Then they had gone for the winter to Algiers for her mother's health.
When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her, though that was before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he had even admitted his own feeling.And since--he had not once thought of her.Not once! The world had indeed vanished."Do come and see us--Sylvia." The very notion was an irritation.No rest from aching and impatience to be had that way.
And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of waiting for to-morrow's meeting by going on the river passing by her cottage? There was still one train that he could catch.
He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at the inn;got up early next morning, took a boat, and pulled down-stream.
The bluffs of the opposite bank were wooded with high trees.The sun shone softly on their leaves, and the bright stream was ruffled by a breeze that bent all the reeds and slowly swayed the water-flowers.One thin white line of wind streaked the blue sky.He shipped his sculls and drifted, listening to the wood-pigeons, watching the swallows chasing.If only she were here! To spend one long day thus, drifting with the stream! To have but one such rest from longing! Her cottage, he knew, lay on the same side as the village, and just beyond an island.She had told him of a hedge of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's edge.He came to the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater.It was all overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark even in this early morning radiance, and marvellously still.There was no room to row; he took the boathook and tried to punt, but the green water was too deep and entangled with great roots, so that he had to make his way by clawing with the hook at branches.Birds seemed to shun this gloom, but a single magpie crossed the one little clear patch of sky, and flew low behind the willows.The air here had a sweetish, earthy odour of too rank foliage; all brightness seemed entombed.He was glad to pass out again under a huge poplar-tree into the fluttering gold and silver of the morning.And almost at once he saw the yew-hedge at the border of some bright green turf, and a pigeon-house, high on its pole, painted cream-white.About it a number of ring-doves and snow-white pigeons were perched or flying; and beyond the lawn he could see the dark veranda of a low house, covered by wistaria just going out of flower.A drift of scent from late lilacs, and new-mown grass, was borne out to him, together with the sound of a mowing-machine, and the humming of many bees.It was beautiful here, and seemed, for all its restfulness, to have something of that flying quality he so loved about her face, about the sweep of her hair, the quick, soft turn of her eyes--or was that but the darkness of the yew-trees, the whiteness of the dovecote, and the doves themselves, flying?
He lay there a long time quietly beneath the bank, careful not to attract the attention of the old gardener, who was methodically pushing his machine across and across the lawn.How he wanted her with him then! Wonderful that there could be in life such beauty and wild softness as made the heart ache with the delight of it, and in that same life grey rules and rigid barriers--coffins of happiness! That doors should be closed on love and joy! There was not so much of it in the world! She, who was the very spirit of this flying, nymph-like summer, was untimely wintered-up in bleak sorrow.There was a hateful unwisdom in that thought; it seemed so grim and violent, so corpse-like, gruesome, narrow and extravagant!
What possible end could it serve that she should be unhappy! Even if he had not loved her, he would have hated her fate just as much--all such stories of imprisoned lives had roused his anger even as a boy.